Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/29/the-texas-woman-charged-with-murder-for-taking-an-abortion-pill-is-adds-sheriff-and-hospital-snitches-to-lawsuit.html
…
16 Likes
I hope she bankrupts the defendants. As with Alex Jones, we all have to show the Xtianists and fascists and conspiracists that there are material consequences for trying to foist their lunatic and hateful beliefs on the rest of us.
48 Likes
interested to know if the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would be interested in that HIPAA violation.
40 Likes
American hero.
16 Likes
First, it’s a hateful, unconstitutional law and the folk who passed it should be punished over that.
But second, it’s the law right now, and if a rural hospital breaks it, they could be literally shut down by the legal repercussions of that action. My parents are both in their 90s and though they are both doing well right now, they both owe their lives to that facility - not because the hospital miraculously cured them but because it stabilized their conditions until they could be transferred to a more capable facility for treatment. Most of Texas is rural, and there is already a crisis in healthcare because most of their doctors have to split their time between multiple rural hospitals in different towns. When that happens, for four days a week, that doctor is simply unavailable. It’s not just an inconvenience if these facilities are taken out or even crippled temporarily.
It’s a horrible situation, but we should be fighting the laws and the lawmakers, not the people who are forced to obey those laws so that they are not prevented from doing whatever good they can.
10 Likes
It didn’t fly then and it applies even less to the people being sued now. Corrupt laws and lawmakers are nothing if people refuse to follow them.
Abbott and his fascist cronies could try to shut down the hospital for defying this unjust law. It would be just that – a try – because people like yourself would make it national news.
29 Likes
The hospital staff were not obeying the law by snitching. In fact, as @zeiche mentioned already, they violated federal law (HIPAA) by disclosing PII without the woman’s consent. Moreover, nothing here indicates she is suing the hospital, only some of its employees, the prosecutors, and the sheriffs.
33 Likes
Hospital staff need to be at least as afraid of violating patient privacy laws as they are of violating draconian anti-choice laws.
34 Likes
Hopefully she’ll expand the suit to include the hospital itself.
Bankrupting Starr County would stop them from employing fascists, and bankrupting the hospital would stop them from employing collaborators.
Not all heroes wear capes!
3 Likes
Bankrupt the hospital? I guess the locals could go to Mexico in an emergency. Not sure that would be in network though
4 Likes
Not at all what I was suggesting, FTR
8 Likes
Understood, but I still think that hospitals who circumvent HIPAA in the service of fascism aren’t really in the healthcare business anymore (but at least they help the trains run on time! /s).
2 Likes
What law are you referring to? There is no law requiring hospital employees to report a suspected abortion to law enforcement. The only laws about hospitals and medical providers reporting abortions are the ones required if a hospital performs one. And those reports don’t go to law enforcement, they go the Health and Human Services Commission.
The person who snitched on Lizelle Gonzalez violated HIPAA. They were not following the law and they did it because they wanted to ruin her life.
22 Likes
I just tried to check out the county run hospital, and their website gives me the following error:
eta: I work in Texas, at a med school, but am in Germany at the moment. Apparently that means my visiting a public webpage of a public hospital is verboten.
let’s see if it’ll onebox:
6 Likes
what law? according to the article that isn’t the law. as described, the law targets the people who help, not the woman getting abortion care herself.
Under Texas’ multiple abortion bans, it is not a crime for a woman to obtain or seek abortion care for herself; the abortion bans target physicians and anyone who aids a woman in obtaining or seeking an abortion.
i am not at all surprised to hear that law enforcement professionals misinterpreted the law. i can only imagine they were enforcing the law they wanted rather than the law they got.
6 Likes
I wish it would actually happen! Alex Jones’s show is still on the airwaves. Trump still hasn’t paid his multiple fines.
5 Likes
This isn’t true - I wish people would stop thinking HIPPA is like a vault - it’s not - in fact it specifically doesn’t apply if a state law requires disclosure - even if that law is shit.
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/disclosures-required-by-law/index.html
HIPPA doesn’t apply here at all - even a tiny amount.
That’s not what the Texas law requires, though. The individuals who violated HIPAA here weren’t being compelled by law to reveal a woman under their care. They disclosed confidential patient data as a leak, without any tie to the Texas law which does not penalize a woman from having an abortion. As such, the full weight of HIPAA applies. They should lose any license they have and be prevented from going anywhere near patients or patient data again.
15 Likes
I do not know how else I can say this
The. Hospital. Workers. Were. Not. Required. To. Tell. The. DA. About. Her. Abortion.
There is not a law in Texas that requires hospital workers to tell anyone about a suspected abortion done by the person who is pregnant. It doesn’t exist.
If a doctor or nurse had performed the abortion, yes, there is a law criminalizing their conduct. But that wasn’t what happened here and that wasn’t what was reported. There is no mandatory reporter law for abortion.
11 Likes
8 Likes
